Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

Every false flag operation designed to rally support for a conflict.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/07/fu...

When HRW says Israel is bad, i think its a bit like when a cop says the person they arrested is bad. It may very well be true, but i wouldn't put it as a sure thing until some sort of trial is done.

P.s. in regards to "porportionate" - keep in mind that has a special definition in international law that is different from how people use it in normal conversation.

We've seen some evidence that hospitals are used outside their humanitarian function.

It's true that even if the hospital loses it's protection that does not mean that it's ok to just go ahead and level it because of the presence of a single combatant (and that hasn't happened, I'm pretty sure e.g. no hospital in Gaza suffered a direct bombing attack e.g. but it may be ok under certain circumstances to completely level a hospital that is used for military purposes if enough warning has been given), the proportionality principles still applies. Proportionate has a very specific meaning in terms of the Geneva convention which most people aren't familiar with. I agree that the IDFs actions must be proportionate in that sense. The IDF claims its actions are. The IDF has lawyers that evaluate actions against international law.

Human Rights Watch isn't necessarily an unbiased observer here. Naturally they would not have access to the IDF's intelligence and the IDF can be justified in not sharing its intelligence to protect its sources.

My basic take is why is it beneficial for the IDF to waste time and resources attacking hospitals that have no military use? It's bad PR, it's wasted efforts that could be directed somewhere else. Doesn't make sense. It's possible it could be "more careful" in avoiding those in certain situations. Is it the highest item in the priority list (e.g. above the security of IDF soldiers), probably not.

It's true that some people were forced to leave after the Arabs started a war on Israel in 1948 and those people generally weren't allowed back. It's also true that many people chose to leave and also weren't allowed back. That said your logic makes no sense to anyone with western values IMO. Your life is more important than your property. I.e. between the option of staying in your property and dying and leaving and not dying the choice for most people in the west is clear. It's true that if they leave they may not be allowed to return. We can argue about the morality of that given they started this current war as well. I think in practice Gazans will be allowed to go back, but time will tell and events will transpire. If anything in practice leaving their homes to allow Israel to focus on Hamas would have likely shortened the war and increased their chances of getting back home and to normality sooner.

I can't really follow your logic who is wanting to kill who and who has been abusing who.

Palestinian propaganda repeats this first point, it's not in good faith.

I'm not familiar with the second incident you're mentioning but I'm sure in any major war there will be plenty of examples of "things that are really bad". E.g. in the Ukraine-Russia war summary executions of surrendering soldiers, intentional bombing of civilians, are things that happen a lot and don't make the news. Give me one example of a major war where these things don't happen. For a western country the answer should be that these incidents should be investigated and the individuals punished. I think that rarely happens (e.g. you're not going to find many incidents of US soldiers, or "private security contractors", punished in the various wars the US engaged with). We should still strive for that. I'm pretty sure the IDF command does not order tanks to run over civilians, that is not policy, quite the opposite.

That bomb is large enough to level an apartment block, so ~100 casualties and they don't know where it will land. Who are they targeting with that type of bomb, 1 Hamas fighter hiding among population?

It's error margin is in hundreds of meters. You are not allowed to kill 100 innocent people in the hopes (not certainty!) of getting 1 enemy soldier. That's exactly what 'indiscriminate killing of civilians' means.

That is why United States has never used this size of bomb, let alone unguided, in it's recent wars in Urban areas. They were also fighting guerrilla fighters - Taliban, Al Qaeda, etc.

The act of using this weapon in Urban area is a war crime, just as it would be a war crime to use chemical weapons, etc.

If the laws are rewritten to state "you are never allowed to attack a hospital or a school. No exception", then what will follow is one party to the war will put their military installation insides schools and hospitals and the other party to the war to the war will say "these geneva conventions are unreasonable and we wont follow it"

In other words, nobody would respect Geneva conventions if they are unreasonable

In our personal lives the government can compel us to follow the law with the threat of overwhelming force; if I break the law I will be arrested, and regardless of how much I fight back I will not be able to stop it. Laws in our everyday lives are like commands from a parent to a child; the government, as the parent, can and will compel the child's obedience.

International law is different. If a state breaks international law, there is no entity willing or capable of using overwhelming force to compel obedience. States have armies and some have nuclear weapons; the amount of force required to compel a state to behave a certain way is huge, and generating that force is extremely costly. When states break international law there are consequences, but at the end of the day violence is generally not on the table.

Effective international law is a balancing act. An international standard of warfare that placed extremely strict standards on when it was permissible to kill civilians would make fighting a war significantly harder. No state would obey such a law because winning the war is the absolute highest priority, making the law worthless. Instead, laws of war try to outlaw actions that don't affect the ability of a country to win a war. No chemical or biological weapons (high explosives are more effective), humane treatment of prisoners (discourages the enemy fighting to the death), and no killing civilians unless in the pursuit of a military objective (if it's not in pursuit of a military objective, then it's a waste of resources). The goal of the laws of war is to prevent unnecessary violence, not prevent violence altogether. It's a case of "perfect is the enemy of good."

>The word to pay attention to here is "military advantage" - i.e. "military value" of the target. Seeing a "hamas" go into a hospital or a rocket being fired from it doesn't give Israel the green light to bomb it. While there is no well-defined metric or number that defines proportionality - it is safe to say that Israelis don't meet the necessary criteria by any reasonable measure. Establishing the necessary proportionality to justify an attack on a hospital, refugee camp or shelter is needless to say, extraordinarily high.

Take the recent ICC arrest warrants as an example. The ICC just ruled that Russian targeting of Ukraine's power grid constituted a war crime.“During this timeframe, there was an alleged campaign of strikes against numerous electric power plants and sub-stations, which were carried out by the Russian armed forces in multiple locations in Ukraine,” the court said. "The ICC said the attacks led by Koblylash and Sokolov on Ukraine’s electrical grid caused civilian harm which was excessive when compared with any expected military advantage". This even though power infrastructure has clear military value.

Now look at the siege and attack on Shifa hospital. If Shifa was a vital command-and-control hub where the head of Hamas operated from , or if it contained a major ammo depot - that may constitute sufficient military value to justify the incidental deaths caused by attacking a hospital. A calendar and a couple of AKs behind an MRI machine doesn't does not. Moreover the fact that Israelis had to go in and spend weeks on a fishing expedition to dig up (or make up) the sufficient evidence to justify the attack after-the-fact, proves that they didn't have the necessary justification to stage the attack in the first place. Thus the attack on the hospital violates the Geneva conventions and is a war crime. (But don't hold your breath for any action from the ICC - They are extremely biased and beholden to US and NATO interests).

At this point the mountain of evidence is simply undeniable. When we compare the intensity of atrocity committed by the Israelis, to those in other recent conflicts - Mosul, Homs, Mariupol, Grozny, Yemen- the israelis sails past them all with a healthy margin. Israelis killed more children in a few months than the syrians, russians did over many years. In terms of civillian/combatant ratio and the sheer intensity of civillian deaths in a short time-frame- I am not aware of any national force committing similar attrocity in the 21st century (Maybe the Ethiopian civil war, but I don't know, i am not versed on that conflict) If this was Russia or Iran we wouldn't be having this conversation.

All that said I think Israel will be responsible for lots of broken innocent civilian lives and broken infrastructure when this is all done and their best policy in Gaza will be like USA had towards Germany and Japan after WW2.

Sinwar himself said it :

Then a courier arrived with a message from Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, saying, in effect: Don’t worry, we have the Israelis right where we want them.

Hamas’s fighters, the Al-Qassam Brigades, were doing fine, the upbeat message said. The militants were ready for Israel’s expected assault on Rafah, a city on Gaza’s southern edge. High civilian casualties would add to the worldwide pressure on Israel to stop the war, Sinwar’s message said, according to people informed about the meeting.

Source https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-thinks-it-could-...

You sound confident, stating it like it's a fact. Care to share your sources?

How many school shooters would need to be in a Florida High School before you think it's worthwhile to bomb it? Just a rough number

Let's change the analogy: ISIS terrorists take over the MIT campus. Inside the university are 50 armed terrorists. Is it valid to now bomb the university? What if there are 100 terrorists?

There is no issue with scale here. No matter how much it scales, you won't reach a point where there is an ethical position that argues for the mass murder of people that we actually view as people. It only becomes ethical when we dehumanize the people affected.

I have a problem though when the media just shows an endless stream of emotionally manipulative images and stories. I also have a problem with their selectivity, e.g. they don't chose to show us civilians being attacked in Donetsk or something. They also generally don't show us images of Israeli refugees from the north and the south or actually report on that at all. They totally ignore events like rockets being fired at Israeli cities (still happens though a lot less). The coverage of Hezbollah's attacks and massive scale property destruction in the north of Israel is also nonexistent.

Even at the height of the Russia-Ukraine war we weren't being flooded by the same level of images/stories. Yes, we did get some stories out of Mariupol but not nearly as much as we get out of Gaza. Ukraine claims 25,000 civilians were killed in Mariupol (out of 500,000 people!). I think the destruction of Mariupol easily eclipses the destruction in Gaza. The Russians weren't facing anything similar to what Israel is facing in Gaza, they just blitzed the heck out of the city. Who is painted as more "evil" in western media, Russia or Israel? Arguably Israel. Ofcourse Russia invaded Ukraine and for most of us is clearly the "bad guy" here.

EDIT: and by the way, if you consume Israel media, which is obviously very pro-Israeli. You'll still get the same facts about the conditions in Gaza. But if you consume anti-Israeli media you will get no other relevant facts. If you ask people in the west some very basic questions about the conflict you'll find total cluelessness which is a result of that. Ask a random American how far Tel-Aviv is from Gaza, or where is Palestine, or what is Hezbollah, or any number of basic knowledge questions about the conflict and see. Most know O(nothing), see images of suffering and destruction all day, and naturally will align themselves with the side they see suffering.

Whenever I navigate to CNN's web site it mostly features the plight of Palestinians in manipulative and repetitive ways. Stories showing Israel in a bad light will persist for days on the front page. It shows nothing about the plight of Israelis. When I see CNN reporters like Wolf Blitzer interview Israelis they are openly hostile. Christiane Amanpour interviewed Ehud Barak the other day and her tone was quite hostile. Their referral to Israeli data often uses language like "Israel says" or "Israel alleges" even when reporting on matters that are known to be factual. E.g. their reporter will enter a tunnel that obviously goes under a hospital they just saw outside and will report as if that's still a matter of speculation. Often referral to Hamas data is presented as fact.

CNN leans towards the Democrats in the US (obviously) and we're seeing the Democrats overall take a fairly critical stance towards Israel. So it's not a surprise to me that the left leaning media follows that lead. Though CNN has a history of anti-Israeli bias.

Just Googling now it does seem that it's somewhat of meme in certain circles how CNN is Pro-Israeli. That's understandable. To certain circles using the word "Israel" and not "The Occupation" and the word "terrorism" instead of "resistance", or mentioning evils like the two state solution, interviewing any Israelis etc., is Pro-Israeli. Seriously though, it's ridiculous to consider CNN Pro-Israeli when their focus is mostly on making Israel look bad. It makes perfect sense for the enemies of Israel to attack CNN as being Pro-Israeli because they are trying to use any leverage they can to shift US public opinion because Israel relies on US support. No tactic is beneath them to accomplish their goal of the elimination of Israel. The Palestinians have for decades now pursued these sorts of tactics.

Also check this out (pre-Oct 7th):

https://www.camera.org/article/tracking-cnns-bias-cnns-obses...

I understand that the fact CNN isn't reporting on Israel like Al-Jazeera (Qatar's propaganda arm) does paint them as Pro-Israeli to a certain crowd. It is true they are not Al-Jazeera but they're certainly not Pro-Israeli. Their anti-Israeli bias goes way back.

Keep in mind that I was commenting about the situation very early in the thread. My comment applies only to the very first comments that got posted—perhaps the first couple dozen—no later.

> strict scrutiny is applied to some positions but not others

Can you explain?

Everything that violates human right for example. Or direct threats to democracy.

And indeed, there is no solution here other than to be tolerant of other opinions, which may come from very different contexts than your own.

american foreign policy often becomes european union migration policy. just remember that, for example, when discussing international affairs.

Having said that, I have to say that HN is one of the communities that is better at dealing with different opinions, from different places. It's much harder on Reddit. On Metafilter, it is absolutely impossible: anything far from mainstream American liberalism is considered taboo.

The only thing I'd add to your point is that while HN is certainly global (or let's say highly international), the community is still overwhelmingly from Western countries. (Not all hold pro-Western views, of course, but that's different.) This means that users from non-Western countries who want to contribute views that go against what is commonly believed in the West, have a hard time. We do what we can to help, but unfortunately it's not much, because the forces of large numbers and group psychology are unstoppable, especially together.

The United States killed many more Japanese civilians than American civilians who died during the war, that doesn’t make them right. Hamas has miles of tunnels to provide cover for their rapists but doesn’t allow civilians to shelter, it’s tragic that Hamas is killing its own people this way but Israel should continue until Hamas is defeated like Germany was.

Whataboutism aside, it's well known that US-backed Israel is indeed largely in control of what Egypt does and does not do in regard to Gaza.

Egypt is not free, for example, to allow aid in that Israel has not specifically approved.

We know from some of their previous actions in the region that they could be, if they wanted to - we've seen them take out individual aparment units with missiles, for example.

But given how many unguided munitions Israel are using in Gaza... I mean, almost the whole of Gaza has been reduced to rubble - the idea that every military-age male is Hamas is just not credible.

I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.

2. They DO have an actual legal obligation to protect journalists as well, try searching for “civilian.” If they are targeting journalists (read: civilians) that would obviously be illegal.

The logic doesn't really follow

What shots exactly? the missiles? Attack the launch sites. They're pretty clear as they expose themselves. Israel has 24/7 surveillance it shouldn't be a challenge. Can you support your claim by showing evidence that a hospital was used to launch missiles?

You likely don't have evidence that Israel is targeting anything. It seems every street in the city was indiscriminately bombed, every hospital was distroyed, and tens of thousands of civilians were murdered. That's a massacre not a "response".

This war in Palestine is much closer to a civil war than to any country-to-country combat, especially since Palestine is simply not an independent country. Since Israel is in control of the Gaza strip for 50+ years (explicit military control till the 2005, still in full control of their borders today), it is on them to treat this as authorities in any country are expected to treat insurgencies on territory they control, not as if they were attacked by a foreign country.

We are talking about Gaza. The only Israelis being shot there are Israeli militari attacking the Gaza strip.

If you are talking missiles, well Israel should abandon the colonies and create a no man's land where no civilian, be it Israeli or Palestinian, can go, and only shoot those that trespass.

If you are talking missiles, Israel has air defense systems.

Another method would be the IDF accepting their responsibility for failing to protect the kibbutzim on 7 October, and making damn sure that this doesn't happen again on their watch. Stop killing the Arabs and start defending the jews.

And I don't mean that they should make sure there's no more Palestinians left to attack them, because that is a horror that the world must never see again (but still sees all too often).

Sticking to quite recent examples: South Africa, Basque Country, Ireland.

Given Israel's position of power, they can and should be doing this. However, Israeli politicians just don't want this. Netanyahu has publicly boasted numerous times that he has personally been actively fighting to prevent a two-state solution. A one-state solution is unthinkable to even the moderates in Israel (the Supreme Court has repeatedly iterated that the government MUST protect both the Jewish and the Democratic character of Israel, so integrating the populations of Gaza and the West Bank as full Israeli citizens like this would be unconstitutional, but integrating them as second class citizens would also be unconstitutional).

So what is Israel's solution? Destroying Hamas is a pipe dream - the famine, death, and destruction they are pereptrating in Gaza today will, inevitably, create a new wave of terrorism, whether it's called "Hamas" or something else, as it always has throughout all of history.

The only real solution is massive economic investments in Gaza and the West Bank, and relying on police-like peacekeeping to prevent attacks as much as possible. This is the obvious long-term solution, anything else will worsen, not improve, Israel's security.

Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_peace_process

They still hate one another, but are mostly at peace.

Fairly low compared to what? The USSR invasion of Afghanistan? Assad engaged in a civil war? WW2 carpet bombings?

No recent war has seen anywhere near the deplorable civilian:combatant death ratio that we see here.

And if you also take into account that the IDF basically defines adult male as combatant, so that a lot of the "combatants" killed were actually just adult male civilians, then the picture gets even grimmer.

Not to mention, we keep talking about direct casualties, but Israel is going beyond this - they are not allowing some kinds of critical aid into Gaza at all (water treatment pills are forbidden, for one egregious example), and they are generally only allowing a trickle of aid of any kind in - in effect starving the population.

This is a bad take. Egypt, and others, refuse to take "Palestinian refugees" because doing so would make them complicit in Israel's ethic cleansing. Why should Palestinians be forced off their own land?

Its also not true that Egyptians hate Palestines. In fact I would say its rather unison that they feel great sympathy with the Palestines in the occupied areas, and the boycott of companies that support Israel is strong. McDonald's and Burger Kings are mostly empty and there are Palestine flags at shops, stickers attached to products you buy and people are sad about the situation.